1896 Large Cent With Extensive Die Cracks

That's a keeper! I've seen 1894 large cents with a similar obverse die crack presence. And the bolder the crack the more impressive the coin. Very nice!

Its a very nice high grade coin that shows the example of the die crack, I have a 1893 that has a similar die crack going around the coin in the beads and out through the odd letter nice coin Phil310

Thanks. It looks like the mint had a lot of obverse die breakage during the years 1893-1896, but the reverses seemed to hold up a lot better during those years.

The information in the large cent variety section in the back of the 2011 Charlton shows the mint produced 165 obverse dies and only 71 reverse dies during those years. That is just the opposite of the situation during the 1858-1859 years.

Don, that's a beautiful 96 and your photography really shows the die cracks well!

You're right Bill about not knowing how many dies were actually used each year and I expect some of the obverse dies produced carried over and were used during the next year as you said. Still the ratio of obverse dies to reverse dies produced during those two periods are very different.

The small leaf design probably helped extend the life of the reverse dies as well as the thicker planchets as you mentioned. I guess the question I have is why so many more obverse dies cracked during 1893-1896. The answer could be as simple as poor quality steel used for the dies or improper heat treating or tempering causing the dies to be more brittle than they should be. I guess we'll never know for sure, but it's fun to speculate.